Tio Hardiman, CeaseFire’s executive director, expressed frustration over complaints that police are hassling his Woodlawn workers at a time that their efforts are helping reduce shootings. (Chris Sweda, Chicago Tribune)

CeaseFire Illinois workers say Chicago police officers are increasingly ordering them off street corners in Woodlawn along with gang members, interfering with their efforts to tamp down violence in the crime-plagued neighborhood.

The alleged harassment is the latest sign of tension between CeaseFire and police at a time when the two are supposed to be partners under a first-of-its-kind city contract to reduce shootings and killings in the South Side community.

Adam Collins, a spokesman for Superintendent Garry McCarthy, defended the police conduct, saying officers have a right "in the interest of public safety" to disperse groups off street corners "where gang members are known to congregate."

But CeaseFire workers say it is interfering with their work mediating conflicts, which often involves talking to rival gang members hanging out on the same corners. Over the last two months, as police disperse gang members, officers have been rousting CeaseFire workers — known as "violence-interrupters" — off corners along 63rd Street near King Drive, CeaseFire said.

Police should be able to distinguish gang members easily from CeaseFire workers clad in their trademark orange shirts and nylon jackets, noted Marilyn Pitchford, program manager for CeaseFire Woodlawn.

"The police don't trust some of the staff. They think some of the staff is in the gang life," Pitchford said of CeaseFire workers, many of them ex-cons. "They think once you get that stripe on your back, you continue to be part of that environment."

CeaseFire points out that in the two beats where its Woodlawn workers operate as part of the pilot program, no homicides have occurred this year.

Some law enforcement sources, however, credit an added police presence for the drop in violence.

Regardless, Tio Hardiman, CeaseFire's director, expressed frustration over complaints that police are hassling his Woodlawn workers at a time that their efforts are helping reduce shootings.

"Why are you telling us to get off the street when homicides are down?" Hardiman asked. "They need to stop interfering with our work because we don't interfere with their work. ... We're supposed to have a partnership."

The CeaseFire workers in Woodlawn and North Lawndale on the West Side operate as part of a one-year, $1 million contract that was forged as Mayor Rahm Emanuel looked for even unorthodox solutions last year as Chicago grappled with runaway violence that saw homicides exceed 500 for the first time in four years.

McCarthy, though, does little to hide his disdain for CeaseFire, saying that group doesn't want to work with the police and even dissuades gang members from cooperating with law enforcement. Over the years, Chicago police put little trust in CeaseFire since it depends so heavily on former gang members for its workers.

But distrust of the police is also deeply rooted in CeaseFire. The anti-violence group agreed to the contract last year only if police pledged not to use its workers as informants, saying they would lose credibility with gang members if they came off as snitches for authorities.

Last week, two CeaseFire workers in Woodlawn, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation by police, said officers in marked and unmarked squad cars pull up periodically while they're talking with gang members, angrily telling everyone to get off the corner.

They said most of the problems have occurred at 63rd Street and Vernon Avenue, a busy corner with a fish and chicken restaurant, a liquor store and a CTA Green Line station — all spots where the interrupters said rival gang members frequent and have the potential to clash.

One of the violence-interrupters said they risk arrest if they don't comply with the police order to disperse — and that would mean they would be fired under the city contract. Yet if they don't talk to gang members on those corners, they're not doing their jobs, he said.

"We're in a lose-lose (situation)," he complained as he stood by a wrought-iron gate outside the restaurant. "If we move like they're telling us to do in a hot spot … and something (bad) happens right there, it makes us look bad."

At a meeting Thursday about the problem, Hardiman said police refused to allow CeaseFire workers and the gang members to congregate along the 63rd Street corridor.

Hardiman said he thinks a potential solution could be for CeaseFire workers to try to discourage the gang members from gathering in those areas.

"You need the police just like you need CeaseFire, OK?" Hardiman said. "Just like the churches need a preacher. So we're not going to try and dismiss what the police are all about."